According to YouTube statistics, more than 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. One of the challenges when working with clients or organizations is to present such posts as valuable data instead of just cat video fluff.

With such an overwhelming quantity of data, it can be hard to consider the value in it besides quantifiable “big data” statistical insights. Certainly big data insights are valuable, but we shouldn’t overlook the value that resides in the context of each unique post. This massive amount of data also offers a ready array of individual stories ripe for qualitative analysis, and those studies can provide helpful insights. Qualitative research works side-by-side with big data to foster human-scale understanding. It provides rich insights to those working on a problem or product, and helps focus on human-centric solutions.

When your organization seeks help in understanding stakeholders – employees, consumers or future markets – do you default to survey results, demographic data, past and projected sales and competitive analysis? What if I told you that the most forward-thinking companies are seeking help from social scientists?Today’s social scientists are at-home with big data, and often integrate it into their work to foster valuable insights for industry.That’s the focus of the people at EPIC (@epicpeople_org) whose mission is to promote “the use of ethnographic principles in the study of people and social phenomena.”

During the first decade of the public Internet, the cry was “content is King.” The recent Twitter-Google deal demonstrates that content – even if it is relevant to an audience – is only “King” when it can be discovered. Kudos to both the Google and Twitter teams for this mutually beneficial deal that will also help organizations integrate their social media strategies by providing another avenue of discovery for content, and assist with cross-platform congruity.

About Backdoor Blog

photo by Erin Sandlin

When I was growing up, my aunt had a plaque hanging on her back door that said, "backdoor friends are best." That plaque helped me appreciate the experience of entering her house through the back door into the small kitchen with its linoleum floor to sip tea in mismatched mugs and share stories without the pretense or formality that front door guests had to endure. That's the kind of atmosphere I strive to create with my backdoor blog - to strip away the pretense that sometimes rears its head in academia and organizations, and to explore the possibilities that this dynamic new media landscape brings to us.

The topics I blog about include digital and social media, creativity, and storytelling in the context of branding, public relations, advertising, marketing and pedagogy (how best to teach).

I invite you to join me in this conversation ... and share like only backdoor friends do.